BONUS The Doc Crew Just Left
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Guest:How's it going there?
Guest:How's your workspace?
Guest:Is everything back to normal?
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:I never know really how... Yeah, it's roughly correct, but it feels like something's missing.
Marc:I think they moved a guitar stand out of here.
Marc:It was a little mildly chaotic because I guess their cinematographer wasn't available, and there was a battery problem, so they didn't... You do enough of this type of stuff where it's like they didn't have lovs.
Marc:They didn't just use the thing you've got there?
Marc:No, because it's not what they were shooting.
Marc:They didn't even need to do it in the studio, really.
Marc:Apparently, it's very close.
Marc:So it wasn't... There was no... They could have done a long shot of me sitting here, but they chose not to.
Marc:What do I care?
Marc:But it was just like the battery packs that they had rented were fucked up, so there was no love.
Marc:I'm like, you know what?
Marc:Not my problem.
Marc:I hope they got it.
Marc:It wasn't like I hadn't told the story before what is becoming a...
Marc:slowly diminishing memory of some of the stuff.
Marc:But yeah, it seemed pretty good.
Guest:Well, what we should tell people, this was for a documentary that's being shot called Age of Audio, which seems to be about a, I guess, four or five years long running project that
Guest:by this documentary crew led by a director named Sean Michael Colon.
Guest:And he is making a movie about the history of podcasts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they spoke with me.
Guest:They reached out to me to talk about the Obama episode, particularly how it happened.
Guest:And from what I learned...
Guest:You know, the reason why they reached out to me was because it kept coming up in other interviews with people, people telling them like, oh, this was a seminal moment for us.
Guest:And I think that in general, they were going to like tell the story without us.
Guest:Like there was there was a possible possible.
Guest:Well, what I was told was that they reached out in 2019 and we didn't do it.
Guest:You know why?
Marc:Because it was just another one of those emails.
Marc:Without somebody vouching for people, you're just sort of like, I don't know what this is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:And, you know, who knows who they had at that time or what the... Like, you might have been one of the first people or whatever.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I can't get a sense of... You know, anytime they're talking about whatever they're doing... I mean, the fact that was...
Marc:You know, I brought up the patent troll before we went on Mike.
Marc:But the weird thing is, I remember that whole incident, even after the fact, even after we knew, like, someone should tell this story, there was a sense of like, well, let's not, you know, get anything too much attention.
Marc:At that time, sure.
Guest:But, you know, I mean, I think the thing that if anybody has followed us talking about this over the years when there was a patent troll basically trying to say that they had the patent for podcasting and everyone was going to have to pay up.
Guest:And, you know, we were a big part of fighting against that with the help from the EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Marc:It's such a great story.
Marc:It could be a very boring movie with a triumphant ending.
Yeah.
Marc:Where you just get like these five podcasters who no one else seems to give a shit out of the thousands of podcasters.
Marc:And it's going on for years.
Marc:And we finally figure out this way to beat the guy.
Guest:And then over another year.
Guest:It's over now.
Guest:Now it can be talked about.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it's like it was so dramatic, but it was such a slow burn.
Marc:Like even during the trial with the EFF guy, he was like, I don't know how this is going to go.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:It felt like it went on for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, but I mean, the thing is, it's like they do make movies like that now.
Guest:Like there was a movie about, you know, these dorks sitting online day trading and driving up the GameStop stock.
Guest:And they made a whole movie about that.
Marc:I watched that movie.
Guest:Was it good?
Guest:Yeah, it's okay.
Marc:I mean, it's okay.
Guest:All of these things are like that.
Guest:All of them are... That's what the podcast movie would be.
Guest:Eh, it was fine.
Guest:That guy kind of played Marin okay.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But the Game Boy thing was like... Or the Game Hut, whatever the fuck it was, was... You know, it had huge financial implications.
Marc:I mean, the patent troll business, I know they've done...
Marc:investigative reports on patent trolling and it's relatively interesting but the human that that we were the the last on the on the sequence like the podcaster we don't even know what we're using we turn the thing on yeah right so we had no idea what we were it was totally a utility it was not anything we could even wrap our brains around right
Guest:The hilarious thing is that it's like you and Chris Hardwick and, you know, whoever the guy from Adam Carolla's team, you know, it's like all these people that are now on the front lines of it.
Marc:Yeah, but it was so insulated.
Marc:And there were all these other podcasters like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Marc:Cedar was the one that blew the whistle first.
Guest:Well, honest to God, Mark, probably the only depiction of this this is ever going to have in fiction is the episode of your television show where you and Sam fought the patent troll.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't even remember that episode.
Guest:I do.
Guest:Cause it was basically what happened with, you know, different people playing the same parts, but it was like, it was like you and Sam and Jackie Cation and like, you know, some guy with like a rub-a-dub-dub two men in the tub podcast or something.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And you guys are sitting around your living room trying to figure out how to fight this patent troll.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, that was very esoteric television there.
Marc:But yeah, I just remember that.
Marc:But there were these moments where Corolla Caves pays the guy off, doesn't help anybody but himself, right?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And only makes the patent trust.
Guest:The EFF was quite pissed about that.
Marc:Yeah, it was it's a it's kind of a great story because we were in it and it was so I remember we were trying to talk to Matt Belknap about the new platform that he was building.
Marc:And we were like, well, Lipson can't protect us.
Marc:Can you offer us protection?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like, it was like a racket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Art 19, which actually did get off the ground and became a very useful platform.
Guest:But, but yeah, that was one of our, like, he wanted us to join his platform and we were trying to use that as leverage.
Guest:We will join if you put up the money to stop this.
Guest:Do you remember you actually put the same thing out there to Norm Pattis?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's the devil and is the guy who, you know, basically, you know, tried to commodify podcasting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Podcast.
Marc:What happened to that guy?
Marc:Is podcast one still a thing?
Marc:I'm not sure, to be honest with you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember Norm Pattis.
Marc:Couldn't stop telling me how amazing it was.
Marc:He drove to Highland Park to meet me.
Guest:Oh, a West Sider.
Guest:He was really stretching his legs.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I thought it would be good for us to just kind of compare notes and see if we were on the same page, which I think we were.
Marc:Considering I was texting you for my lapses of memory throughout the interview.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:She'd ask me a question.
Marc:I'd be like, let me text my memory.
Guest:It's so funny, though, because everything you texted me is stuff I have on instant recall.
Guest:Like, you're like, what year was the patent troll?
Guest:2013.
Guest:Like, I know that right away.
Marc:Who's the patent, the troll fighter?
Guest:Yeah, Drew Curtis from FARC.
Guest:Um, but did they, so my question is, so where it kind of came from with me, uh, as I mentioned, they, they reached out to me because they heard a lot from other people they were interviewing and they've interviewed, you know, Ira Glass, Kara Swisher, Kevin Smith, uh,
Guest:Scott Aukerman.
Guest:And a lot of people were saying, oh, the Marc Maron talking to Obama in the garage, that was a real inflection point.
Guest:Like you're going to have to tell that story as part of this documentary.
Guest:So they reached out to me as like the person who was a producer on that.
Guest:And like, I was going there specifically to just speak about that incident, that, you know, event, Obama being on the show.
Guest:But then it just became like, anytime I brought something up, there'd be a question.
Guest:And they'd be like, well, why, what was that all about?
Guest:And I'd be like, well, you got to go back to like the beginning of podcasting to answer that.
Guest:Like, you know, it kind of looped into the idea that if you remember, we charged, we, we wanted that Obama episode to have no ads.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We didn't want to interrupt it with ad reads at all.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So we, we told mid role who was our, our advertising rep at the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We said, if you can sell the rights to this episode to any company, one company, that they can be the presenter of the episode, but not get an ad, right?
Guest:Like you would not do an ad, but we would just say, this episode is being presented by whatever company.
Guest:So Squarespace did it and they paid $100,000 to do it.
Guest:That was a big deal.
Guest:massive right exactly like line in the sand for everybody you could get an episode could cost a hundred thousand dollars and they're still with us oh yes do i mean we've got squarespace all the time they were just they were over the moon about getting that spot too there it was competitive was adam and eve in the running sure for
Guest:I would like, if they had come through, if Adam and Eve had come through, I would have asked Obama to do the read for it.
Guest:Well, what you got here is a couple of butt plugs and...
Guest:So I was mentioning to the doc crew, like, that was the kind of ingenuity of mid-roll at the time.
Guest:They were excellent at selling podcasts.
Guest:And I was like, honestly, you're not telling the story of podcasts without telling the story of how...
Guest:Essentially, Jeff Ulrich and Midroll injected ads into podcasts in a very repeatable, monetizable way.
Guest:And they were like, tell us more about this.
Guest:So then we had to go all the way back to basically where you and I started out, where it was like...
Guest:adam and eve right or you know the you know we took we brought our just coffee ad uh component along with us and it was like we were selling door-to-door sales essentially if someone was interested i'd get on the phone with them i'd be like i guess we could do this for like a thousand bucks or something yeah sure arrange like random things it would be like a sub pop records ad or something like right
Guest:Uh, so, so, you know, it was basically in doing that stuff was where, you know, I, I was hopeful they would go back to you and start from like the, the creative end of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like starting a podcast at the time you started, it was really nothing.
Guest:No one had a template.
Guest:There wasn't anything you were supposed to do.
Guest:It was just like a calling card at best.
Right.
Marc:Yeah, well, she asked me questions about, you know, did you feel like you were doing a radio show?
Marc:And I was like, not really.
Marc:We knew we could do whatever we wanted, but we didn't know what that was or how it looked.
Marc:And I brought up the point, which I don't think I'd brought up before, really, in thinking about it, which was that...
Marc:Morning Sedition, the show that we did on Air America, though structurally was a morning show, the effort that we put into segments and comedy was different.
Marc:That we, you know, because we had writers on hand, because, you know, we had these options and we were workers, we did something pretty unique.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I think our sensibility around what we could do with audio was informed more by the freedom we had and what we did on Morning Sedition, which was not fundamentally morning radio.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Which was why it wasn't translating elsewhere.
Guest:No one else wanted it because it didn't fit into the mold of what people were doing on radio shows.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So we had that sensibility and I was sort of, I brought that up that like, no, we didn't, we knew we weren't doing radio.
Marc:We were actively, you know, kind of taking advantage of the freedom to feel it out.
Marc:And, uh, and that was a, uh, an interesting point, you know, and I talked about morning sedition and I talked a little bit, but she was asking me broader questions where she was like, could you explain to people who Rush Limbaugh is?
Marc:I'm like,
Marc:No.
Marc:I said, you know, I'm not a radio historian.
Marc:You know, I said, you know, he was a hack music DJ that become an ideologue and sort of it was all built on the back of him.
Marc:Whatever nightmare we're living through, you know, him and Hannity and who were both radio guys.
Marc:But but it did sort of bring to attention that we were aware that we could do whatever the fuck we wanted right away.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:And that we weren't beholden to radio standards.
Guest:Did she take you through... Did they want you to build the arc of the show or something?
Guest:A bit.
Marc:They were sort of teasing me through giving my side of...
Marc:of, you know, what you had said, you know, like in, you know, we started at the beginning with the, you know, at the America studios and then, but not so much about the evolution of the show as much, uh, you know, I infuse some of that, but she's like, well, what was the most important one?
Marc:You know, what was the game changer?
Marc:And I'm like, I'm
Marc:bob odenkirk and i realized that moment was really just a me evolution and then i'm like oh robin right and then like you know to sort of make it clear that that was kind of an odd one for us because you know we traveled it was not done in the studio but because of the nature of the intimacy of it and that it was the only candid conversation in existence with him and then also with the the kind of um
Marc:the gutted entertainment press in terms of their ability to actually have people on staff that could interview these people.
Marc:You know, there was a kind of perfect storm of how that was received in the press and how it was received in terms of people wanting to hear it because of the attention it got through the entertainment press, whose job we were doing for them, that it brought a lot of attention to the show and hence to the medium.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think a lot of people still don't get that about the show, that they think it's like, you know, just because we use like a booking service that books guests on other things, like that doesn't mean we're like part of a talk show circuit.
Guest:It's still our decision of who we want on the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of times it's like the people who are coming on, they're like, oh, good.
Guest:This is my this show is my like place.
Guest:I stretch my legs like they don't get to.
Guest:They know if they're aware of the show, they know it's like this.
Guest:This is the one that kind of exists outside the weird showbiz thing that I've been on.
Marc:It does have a reputation based on, you know, what we do and what the experience is and me, you know, and therefore you.
Marc:But because it still happens, you know, like I definitely get a lot of people that come in here and I can tell, you know, they say they're listeners, but they they just listen to two episodes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I do the same thing if that happens.
Guest:Well, the thing is they get sold by whoever's repping them, you know, like that.
Guest:The person repping them says, oh, no, this is going to be a good one.
Guest:And here, listen to this one or two thing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, even Malcolm McDowell today afterwards, he's like, I see.
Marc:I know why they say you're the best kind of thing.
Marc:You know, like that.
Marc:Why?
Marc:You know.
Marc:why this is good yeah but she asked about like did obama change the the nature of of guests i'm like no but they could say obama was on so it changed you know people's desire to do it that's right yeah well i mean it definitely changed the the quantity and quality i think of the guests that we got we got a lot more pitches outside of people i knew
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Or even just, you know, we had already been booking the show through a booking service for about two and a half years before the Obama episode.
Guest:And, you know, we would get guests.
Guest:You can look at the guest list of people came on before Obama.
Guest:It wasn't nothing.
Guest:But, you know, once Obama was on, I remember there was a week.
Guest:That it was one week after Obama.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:July 9th, 2015.
Guest:And this was the week of guests.
Guest:One week of guests.
Guest:Wyatt Sinek, Jason Segel, Richard Thompson, Jason Bateman, Chris Hayes, Steve Albini, Sir Ian McKellen.
Guest:We had those all booked in the same week.
Guest:After?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was the week of July 9th.
Guest:It was just instantly, you could see that just so many more people were coming on.
Guest:The yeses were happening much more frequently.
Marc:Yeah, there was no way we were going to get Albini without Obama.
Guest:Did they try to talk to you?
Guest:They talked to me a bit, and I guess I'm in a position where I'm okay with talking about it, about the state of podcasts now.
Guest:Were they trying to get you there?
Guest:Because I don't even know that you think about that much.
Marc:No, the only question she asked was, do you listen to any other podcast?
Marc:I'm like, nope.
Marc:I said, I haven't listened to one.
Guest:Which is kind of true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think the only podcast you've probably ever listened to is Karina Longworth's.
Guest:Yeah, because I had to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't know why that is.
Guest:It just is what it is.
Guest:Well, I remember when you even were listening to that, you said, this is hard for me.
Guest:Like, you're just not the kind of person that that's the way you receive information.
Marc:Well, I used to listen to news radio, news talk.
Marc:I would do that to get information.
Marc:But no, I don't engage with podcasts or radio personalities, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they didn't... See, because I don't know how much they told you.
Guest:Did they tell you about what the through line of this doc is?
Marc:Yeah, about a kid.
Guest:Yeah, some young guy who's trying to make it.
Guest:I think the reason they're out there right now is because he's nominated for one of those podcast awards, the Ambys.
Guest:And I think they're hoping for an ending.
Guest:Like that's like whatever they can get out of him winning or losing.
Guest:Is that the ending of the doc?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think because there's this...
Guest:kind of undercurrent in his story that like, he's not going to be able to make it.
Guest:Like he got, he's this guy with a podcast that's respected.
Guest:And forgive me, I don't know who, who he is.
Guest:And I don't know what show it is, but they're saying that that's the problem.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That he he's finding is impossible to break through now.
Guest:And so they did ask me as part of the doc, like, what do you think about that?
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:It's what happens.
Guest:Like, I don't know why people are surprised at this.
Guest:This is what happens when, you know, especially when big money gets into media and it all expands and then there's a bubble that bursts and then there's a contraction and we're absolutely in the contraction and contractions are good.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, look, I, you know, you're, I don't know anything about anything usually.
Marc:And, but she was pretty specific about, you know,
Marc:You know, our business, you know, and our relationship.
Marc:And, you know, there was a large chunk of sort of like, well, you guys were invited, you know, to go on Earwolf.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, it wasn't going to happen.
Marc:It's just not the way we work.
Marc:You know, we do not know how to delegate because we work and we have a way of working.
Marc:And, you know, we could have started our own network, but it was just sort of like it takes everything we have to do this.
Marc:And we don't we don't really trust the process of of of other people.
Marc:And we do this one thing and we do it top notch.
Guest:Yeah, I was kind of fine with the minimal amount of producing we did when when we signed.
Guest:uh, with Earwolf's premium network, which was Howl.
Guest:And like, uh, we did like a short mini series for Cliff Nestor off on there that, you know, we helped produce and that, that kind of stuff was fine, but that is not enough to make a network.
Guest:It was just because they were essentially specials, right?
Guest:They were premium specials.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also because of the way we work and the way you work, it's like, you know, it's a lot of work.
Marc:Takes a lot out.
Marc:We're, we're, we're kind of odd perfectionists.
Marc:And, you know, and we're focused.
Marc:And then she's like, well, was there ever a point where you thought, like, I'm just going to ditch the audio thing because I want to build my other career?
Marc:I'm like, I don't.
Marc:I said to her, I said, we're not entrepreneurs.
Marc:There was no world in which Brendan and I were going to make a fortune.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:doing what we were doing you know because we were used to i do what i do specifically how i do it you were used to working in larger structures you know for bigger companies and we were not careerists per se no i just i like to i'd like to be assigned the thing i'm working on and then make it very good that's why that's it so but then it just became about like do you
Marc:You know, was there a benefit to that?
Marc:I'm like, yeah, we don't have a boss and we make all the decisions.
Marc:And like, it was almost like they, she couldn't really understand it.
Marc:Like we're, I'm not a careerist thinker and we're not greedy.
Marc:And she's like, so you were never like empire building.
Marc:Like what?
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, we've had those conversations, but ultimately, I think what guides us is the fact that we're not greedy and the fact that earning an honest dollar or making a good living because of our work is what we do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even when the opportunities were there to do something else, like theoretically, we could have really, you know, if it was what we did, we could have built.
Marc:Some sort of network or at least a family of shows that we might have been able to sell at some point.
Guest:Well, we also had the offer to sell this to an exclusivity deal so that we would get a lot of money so that it would then be behind a platform's paywall.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We got those offers many times.
Marc:And I told her, I said, the platform we're on now, they had to deal with our terms.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we didn't change the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, that was always, for me, always the big reason to not go with any network.
Guest:I didn't think that there was anything objectionable about Earwolf.
Guest:In fact, I thought of the people playing in the field.
Guest:Jeff Ulrich was one of the smarter ones.
Guest:He seemed to...
Guest:He seemed to understand how it was all going to work for creative people and business people together.
Guest:And there are very few people in the podcast landscape that understood that.
Guest:Jeff being the co-founder of Earwolf with Scott Aukerman.
Guest:And then Jeff went on to create the platform Midroll, which was like a separate entity, but sold all the ads on the Earwolf shows.
Guest:And we signed on with them to sell our ads when we basically moved it off of our plate.
Guest:And I always thought that's the best way we could go forward is finding the correct strategic partners, but making sure we still own the show.
Guest:We never sold it to anybody and we never like put the show under an umbrella where it could be lumped in with something else.
Guest:Because frankly, at a point in time where we weren't like making a full living off the show, I would have stopped doing the show if that were the case.
Guest:Like I had other corporate jobs I could have gone and had.
Guest:I didn't need to work corporate for podcasts.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That was the thing is like, you know, even if you're on a network, then you have to deal with the culture of the network and oversight.
Marc:And it was just, you know, and then the idea was like, what am I going to go down to Earwolf and sit in one of those studios after the Sklar brothers get done?
Marc:Right.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I don't know.
Marc:But it was when you talk about it, there's a pride that happens to, you know, have somehow managed to do good work, but also, you know, kind of be an originator of something and being able to make an honest but good living out of it.
Marc:There's nothing better than that.
Guest:Oh, I mean, just think about today.
Guest:You spent a weekend on the road.
Guest:You're flying around from L.A.
Guest:to Atlanta to Boise, Idaho, back to L.A.
Guest:You get in last night.
Guest:You're back hunkered down, going to work.
Guest:You got to do some prep for an interview today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in comes, you know, 80-year-old Malcolm McDowell.
Guest:You don't know what to expect.
Guest:You've been in shitty situations before with older actors, sirs in front of their names and whatnot.
Guest:And this guy comes in and you guys, you texted me when it was done.
Guest:The first thing you said was, you're going to love that.
Guest:And I was like, and I didn't know if you meant that it was just like me specifically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was like, did you have fun?
Guest:And you were like, hell yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, just one of those weird things where it's just I still work the same way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which is like, you know, you send me some facts.
Marc:You send me a breakdown of areas of interest.
Marc:And then I've got to sort of integrate that into like, what do I see the arc is for myself?
Marc:Right.
Marc:to engage with this.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, you know, I'm Googling British new wave directors, British new wave actors, because I knew he was the next generation from that.
Marc:So these were the guys that were around and the director that made the movie that kind of broke him, this guy, uh, Anderson, Lindsay Anderson.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:Um, you know, he was sort of a next generation of that.
Marc:So that gets us into an area, into a culture, into a world, you know, that was his day to day.
Marc:And then, you know, we, you know, we start with the Rolling Stones poster and then we get to the fact that he grew up next to Liverpool and he saw the Beatles when they were the silver Beatles and he was a kid, you know, and so then you kind of build out a life around that.
Marc:But that's how I do it, you know, day of in the shower or, you know, I'm kind of like, well, you know, what's going to get me into this guy from the side or from the, you know, behind him or whatever.
Marc:So I can figure out what world he was developing in.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it worked out and it usually works out.
Guest:I'm going to tell you, dude, it's been quite a while, quite a while.
Guest:since I got a comment from you that was like, that one was all right.
Guest:Like, it's been a long time.
Guest:I would be hard pressed to say when the last time that happened.
Guest:It definitely hasn't happened this year.
Guest:Like, it's been a while.
Marc:But the funny thing is, is that you and I have like a rare kind of like candid conversation about where we're at personally.
Marc:I mean, I do it more than you.
Marc:But, like, you know, we were sort of like, I'm burnt, dude.
Marc:I'm fucking burnt out, man.
Marc:I'm tired.
Marc:And I say that a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, like, arguably, you know, we're operating it, you know, in terms of me talking at peak level.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, the interviews in the last month or two have just been, like, as good, if not better, than always.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think that's just part of our process, too.
Guest:Like, it's because we...
Guest:Just like you're saying to them, the documentary crew that was there, like the way you wanted to do it was to keep it in your control.
Guest:And that's your control.
Guest:That's my control.
Guest:And really nobody else's.
Guest:And so we like could make the decision, hey, this is the type of guest we want.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we could tell the bookers that, and then we can go and use that as like a template for ourselves and kind of shape the process over the next several months when we make that decision.
Guest:And that's what we've done.
Guest:I'd say for probably like the past year, we really kind of focused on who exactly do you want to talk to?
Guest:What are the types of conversations do you want to have?
Guest:And then that energizes you.
Guest:It gives, it makes for better experience for the listener and
Guest:And it just all works out.
Guest:It makes us feel creatively fulfilled.
Guest:Like that's the whole purpose of doing this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, like, there's a big part of my life where, you know, I expand my knowledge and interests, you know, through podcast guests.
Marc:You know, I've become very, you know, I will more so than ever.
Marc:Watch old stuff, you know, and find ways in and around what they're out there promoting.
Marc:You know, a good example is Lily Gladstone and that movie she did that no one saw last year or a year ago.
Marc:What was that called?
Marc:Unknown Country?
Marc:The Unknown Country, yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, my God, this is where we go.
Marc:This is where we start because this is obviously a personal journey.
Marc:And so but then I get to watch that movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, if I had had time, I would have watched those first two Malcolm McDowell movies.
Marc:But I, you know, I didn't.
Marc:And, you know, I just, that's when I bring them up and they say something about it.
Marc:And I go, yeah, yeah.
Marc:but it's not beyond me to say like, I didn't see it, but I, I, I, I pulled back from that.
Guest:I also don't think that it's entirely necessary when it's a guy like him with a massive body of work.
Guest:If you go and watch something, you know, that he did, if you, I would say it, if you were otherwise not engaged with his work, right.
Guest:You can watch one thing or two things and really latch onto them.
Guest:But if you had, you have a sense of him and you know, you, if anything you want to talk to him about,
Guest:clockwork orange and you want to talk to him about caligula well clockwork is near enough to the beginning right and so if you had gone and watched those earlier things i think you might wind at risk falling into that for too long of a chunk of the talk and and then the talk doesn't become as expansive as it was
Marc:Right, yeah, but it would give me a sense of him young and hungry.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and that.
Marc:But clockwork is close enough.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And it worked out pretty good.
Guest:Yeah, based on what you were telling me, there's some good stories.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Yeah, there's a couple of good ones.
Marc:There's a couple of good Peter Sellers ones in there.
Marc:And Olivier.
Marc:And...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, he was definitely on the scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, Mick Jagger.
Marc:He's buddies with Mick Jagger.
Marc:That's how it opened.
Marc:I mean, he was looking at my Gimme Shelter poster and I said, yeah, the Stones, they were great back then.
Marc:He's like, yeah, Mick's not talking to me anymore.
Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, here we go.
Marc:Great story about being on the roof of a building in New York with Mick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Mick basically telling him, like, I'm not going to be doing this when I'm 50.
Marc:And they're both laughing.
Marc:And then Mick points over to a building over there.
Marc:He says, that's where the king lives.
Marc:And it was Lennon.
Guest:Oh, Lennon.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, that was I'm glad you had that part of your day.
Guest:I'm also glad you spoke to this doc crew because I did after I spoke to them.
Guest:I was like, this is ridiculous if Mark isn't represented in this thing.
Guest:And if it was just some scheduling issue or just some, you know, got lost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A pitch that didn't break.
Marc:They weren't pushy.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That shouldn't be the reason it didn't happen.
Guest:And I don't know when this movie is going to be finished, let alone come out.
Guest:But if you do want to check out what they're doing, there's a website, AOAMovie.com.
Guest:That's Age of Audio.
Guest:And go check it out and see what it was that we talked about.
Guest:Oh, also, for you Fulmeron people...
Guest:You got this week to submit your Ask Mark Anything questions.
Guest:Remember, it's only you, Fulmeran people, this time.
Guest:We did not put the link out for the general public.
Guest:And it was, I may say, a much better idea.
Guest:They're better questions because they're the more devoted fans.
Guest:So it totally worked out.
Guest:But keep sending them in because we can do multiple Ask Mark Anything episodes on the basis of the questions you're sending in.
Guest:So that link is in the episode description of this episode right now.
Guest:Go click on it and you can send Mark a message.
Guest:And yeah, you're going to do some rehearsal with your band right now.
Marc:Well, I got a little time.
Marc:Yeah, it's six, but I got to load up.
Marc:You know, it's so funny, though, like, how, like, my life has become, like, it's just, it is what it is.
Marc:And, like, I'm not, you know, I don't register.
Marc:You know, when I see, like, I'm still trying to get it together to interview Malcolm.
Marc:And I see that the black car is parked out front, and it's 20 minutes early.
Marc:I'm like, oh, God.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I got to go print this thing out.
Marc:And it's like, I haven't, I got to go run and do out to the garage.
Marc:And he's walking up and I'm like, okay.
Marc:And I opened the door.
Marc:I'm like, Hey, there he is.
Marc:And he's like, hi.
Marc:And I come on in.
Marc:And then he just like, he's in my house and he's like, look at these cats, you know?
Yeah.
Marc:And like, and then we walk in the kitchen.
Marc:I'm like, you want coffee or anything?
Marc:You know, a tea, something.
Marc:He's like, no, no, I'm good.
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:And then I'm like, I got to, he's like, I got to pee.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, okay.
Marc:And he's like, and then all of a sudden, Charlie, the cat's on the count.
Marc:He's like, I'll go in a second.
Marc:He's like, and I'm like, all right.
Marc:So there's Malcolm playing with Charlie.
Marc:And I'm like, I got to go print something up.
Marc:He's like, okay.
Marc:And I'm like, this is the life.
Marc:This is my life.
Marc:Malcolm McDowell.
Guest:Well, that's the funny thing.
Guest:To take nothing away from that documentary crew that was in there with you today, there is no better documentary of the history of this show than the show itself.
Guest:And you Full Marin listeners are getting the tip-top version of that.
Guest:You're getting even more.
Guest:version but honestly it is absolutely and we've always kind of intended for it to be this way it is a show that comments on itself just by its very existence like the show is the documentation of your life by way of talking to other people yeah that's that is my whole life commenting on myself in front of strangers yeah yeah this worked out great yeah thank god so